Monday, September 23, 2019

Jeff Who Lives at Home or: A Story Modest in Scope, yet Beautifully Successful in its Simplicity (Film Analysis)


Jeff Who Lives at Home is a short, small-budget indie film.  It has a modest, unassuming plot that can easily be overlooked within the swarm of high-stakes, epic blockbusters.  And yet, it is a film that is bursting with heart and surpasses many a multi-million dollar blockbuster.  Jeff (Jason Segel) is a thirty-year-old, unemployed stoner who, as the title suggests, still lives in his parent's house.  Jeff is a peculiar man; the film’s opening scene shows him voice recording his thoughts on the film Signs and its relation to fate and destiny:

Jeff: I watched Signs again last night….it’s funny. The first time you watch it, it's hard to understand what it's about. It just sort of meanders. And then, everything comes together in this one perfect moment at the end. And when you watch it a second or a third or a fourth time, you start to see that all of this randomness is leading towards a perfect moment. My favorite character is the little girl. Everyone thinks she's so strange because she can't finish a glass of water. She's convinced they're contaminated. So, by the end of the film, there are glasses of water littered around this house. And then, it's the water that saves them. And that was fate. I can't help but wonder about my fate. About my destiny.

While lounging about in his mother’s basement, smoking from a bong, Jeff gets a wrong phone call from an irate stranger demanding to talk to someone named Kevin.  Jeff informs the caller that no one named Kevin lives there, causing the caller to curse him out and angrily hang up.  The caller is never seen nor heard from again, yet it strikes a chord in the fate-believing Jeff who cannot get the name Kevin out of his head.  Jeff begins writing the name on a piece of paper. rearranging the letters, looking for some sign within the randomness.  The film’s composition impressively allows its audience to understand Jeff’s humorously unorthodox thought process—such as when he ends up spelling KNIVE with the letters, goes to the kitchen to look at the kitchen knives (terrified at what such “fate” indicates), and gets startled when the phone suddenly rings again.

The caller ends up being Jeff's mom Sharon (Susan Sarandon), asking her son to fetch some wood glue at Home Depot for their broken shutter.  The two bicker like a mom would with her teenage son, threatening to kick Jeff out if he doesn’t do this one task, which he begrudgingly agrees to.  It’s Sharon’s birthday—a painful reminder she’s getting on in her years—that she’s spending working at a dead-end job, arguing with her thirty-year-old son that still lives at home.  Sharon is clearly in a funk—depressed with her life’s direction and finding herself hating her two sons (the latter which I will get to shortly).  She dreams of an exciting life with exotic experiences such as being kissed under a waterfall—even having a picture of a waterfall on her desk.  Sharon’s mundane birthday is interrupted, however, when a paper airplane comes flying out of nowhere with a detailed picture of a rose on it.  Soon, Sharon begins getting anonymous messages from a secret admirer she works with, causing her to amusingly shoot straight up and look around for anyone giving her attention.

Meanwhile, Jeff begins his journey to the Home Depot.  Despite his lazy, spoiled attitude towards his mom, the film makes sure to highlight Jeff’s kinder side, such as taking his time to help an old lady onto the public bus.  While riding the bus, Jeff spots a man wearing a sport’s jersey labeled Kevin on its back.  Believing it to be destiny, Jeff decides to immediately forgo his journey to Home Depot to instead follow the jersey-wearing man off the bus—observing/lowkey stalking him.  The observing/lowkey stalking leads him to a basketball game, where the group playing with the jersey-wearing man ask Jeff to join.  Jeff, having played basketball in school, does well in the game and ends up talking to the jersey-wearing man whose name is, in fact, Kevin (Evan Ross).  Kevin invites Jeff to smoke weed with him behind the bleachers…and he and his friends end up mugging Jeff (which is kind of what you get for stalking a random person).  With no money for the bus, Jeff starts walking home—yet as fate would have it, he stumbles upon his brother Pat (Ed Helms) having a business meeting at a Hooters restaurant.

Pat and Jeff are pretty much polar opposites—causing them to have a rather strained relationship.  While Jeff is a laid-back stoner living a single man’s life in his mother’s house, Pat is a high-strung, arrogant businessman with a wife, a house, and a brand-new Porsche.  Pat’s life is far from great, however, as his egotistical attitude has created rifts between him and his wife Linda (Judy Greer), the most recent issue being buying said Porsche despite her wishes to use the money for finances (resulting in her decorating the Porsche with her breakfast of eggs, bacon, and ketchup).  Pat ends up giving Jeff a ride yet crashes his Porsche into a tree while trying to show off.  While Pat hashes out a deal with the owners of the tree, Jeff notices Linda across the street, getting into a car with another man.  Using the now half-totaled vehicle, Pat and Jeff follow Linda and her friend to a restaurant.

After some hijinks involving Jeff crudely attempting to eavesdrop on Linda and Pat running after his Porsche getting towed from where he illegally parked, the pair end up in a graveyard where their father is buried.  The tombstone subtly reveals that Jeff and Pat's dad died in 1995.  If the film is taking place in real-time (2011, when it was made) and Jeff is thirty, then the brother’s dad died when they were both teenagers.  This explains—all without directly stating—an earlier statement by Pat to his mom about how the brothers did not have an easy adolescent period.  It also gives a reason as to when and why the family began splitting apart, as well as why someone with such skill (basketball) and intellect like Jeff became a recluse stoner.  Pat confesses to a dream he had about their dad the other night, prompting an ecstatic Jeff to reveal he had a near-exact dream—swiftly embracing his brother in a big hug.  This spur-of-the-moment heart-to-heart, however, quickly turns into brotherly bickering:

Pat: I guess it's just something he said to us when we were kids or somethin'. It's like floatin' around in both of our brains.

Jeff: What is wrong with you?... Why do you want to be like this?

Pat: What are you talking about?

Jeff: We had...We were havin'...We're having the same dream!

Pat: What the fuck are you talking about?

Jeff: Why do you want to live like this? You're drifting through this life with no awareness of how special this is.

Pat: You want to talk about what's happening right now, right here? What's happening right now is that I'm getting lectured by my pothead brother who lives in our mom's basement at 30 years old about how I don't understand the universe! Hey, here's some understanding for you. A job and a car and a wife and an apartment!

Yet their argument is interrupted when Jeff suddenly spots a delivery truck labeled “Kevin Kandy”—deciding to follow his destiny and hop onto the truck’s back as a begins driving away, much to his brother's disbelief.  Yet the truck ends up bringing him right back to Pat (much to Jeff’s ecstatic bewilderment), who has tracked down Linda and the man to a Holiday Hotel.  After locating their room, Jeff tries calming down his irrational brother—telling him to take some deep breaths and think out the situation first.  Yet Pat is too high-strung to think rationally, resulting in some hilariously childish dialogue from the homeowning businessman, and adult responses from the stay-at-home NEET stoner:

Jeff: Okay. Close your eyes. What do you see?

Pat: I just can't stop picturing what's going on. What if she's, like, giving him a handjob?

Jeff: You know, I think they're adults. It's probably unlikely she's giving him a handjob.

With no luck calming Pat down, Jeff tries helping by breaking down the room’s study door, resulting in a very hurt shoulder and Pat nearly fleeing the scene like a school kid who just did something bad.  The loud commotion causes Linda and her friend to open the door, letting everything out in the open.  After kicking the man out, Pat and Linda begin conversing over the messy situation, with Pat saying practically everything one could possibly say in such a scenario to make it worse:

Pat: Okay. Start talking…I'm a little upset, actually, and I think that it's understandable!

Linda: I understand that. Look, what I need to know... I just need to know one thing, okay?... Are you mad because you came in here and you found me with another man?

Pat: Yes.

Linda: Or… are you mad because you're afraid that you might lose me?

Pat: What? There's like a part B now?

Linda: Please, don't do that.

Pat: It's just semantic bullshit!

Linda: No, it isn't! It isn't!... You really don't know the difference. Because if you don't understand the difference...

Pat: Linda! Linda. I'm gonna try to listen to you blabber about whatever this is. And I'm gonna try to understand your incoherent babble. Go.

Linda: Why do you always do that?

Pat: What? I'm listening.

Linda: No, you're not... You always just make me feel so stupid!

Pat: I'm sorry it's stupid! I catch you trying to cheat on me and...

Linda: You make fun of everything I say. I'm really just trying to have a conversation with you right now. This is why our relationship is so fucked. And do you think it's about this guy? Because I really don't even fucking care about him! He's nice. He listens to me. But you and I, we are petty, we are passive-aggressive with each other, we don't even fight! I mean, this is a miracle right now! And what I think, honestly…It would be really fucking easy for us to just walk away! It'd be super simple. And that is what I think that we should do.

Linda's attempt at cheating just wasn’t a spur of the moment event—it's been gradually building up to this point and she lays it all out for Pat to see.  Yet Pat doesn’t see, he can’t really, not with his head that far up his ass to see all the problems he’s causing in their relationship—instead only looking at what Linda has done, seeking to put the blame only on her.  It ultimately looks as if their relationship has hit a breaking point of no return.  Linda leaves and, feeling lost and defeated, Pat plops into the room’s bathtub, confessing that he’s envious of the way Jeff views the world.  Jeff disperses Pat’s statement, confessing that he’s not happy at all and that he's been looking for signs about himself ever since their dad's death:

Jeff: You know, since Dad died, I've had this... Had this feeling that it had to be for a reason. I keep thinking that the signs are all about me, but maybe... Maybe they're about you and your marriage.

Pat: My marriage is not good. It is a disaster. I just want to feel like I love Linda. And I want to feel like she loves me. And we both want to, like, be in love. I miss it and I want it so bad.

Jeff: I think you should just say that. To her.

Pat: It's not that simple, Jeff.

Jeff: I don't know. I think it could be that simple. I mean, wouldn't you be psyched if Linda walked in here right now and sat down in this tub next to you and said, "Pat, I want to be in love with you again"?

Pat: That would be awesome.

Jeff: Dude, you need to say that to her. You need to tell her that right now.

As Jeff comforts Pat, Sharon discusses her current slump with her friend Carol (Rae Dawn Chong) at the office.  Sharon confesses to Carol how dejected she is about where she is in life, noting how she thought she'd be in the Peace Corps as well as her dream of kissing under a waterfall.  It's revealed through a tattoo rose, however, that Carol has been Sharon's secret admirer all along.  Sharon is taken back and becomes even more dejected, having no interest in getting sexually involved with/dating women.  Yet Carol puts a very interesting outlook on love and affection:

Sharon: It's just that I'm not gay.

Carol: But that's okay. I'm not gay, either.

Sharon: But you like women.

Carol: So?

Sharon: Well, I like men.

Carol: I like men, too. And to me, it's like, at this point in my life, whether it's a man or a woman, it doesn't matter. I want someone who gets me. I feel like I deserve that. And I think you do, too.

Sharon: Well, it's important, yes. But it doesn't mean I want to sleep with everybody that understands me. That's all.

Carol: No, no, no. That's not my intention. Isn't the most important thing finding someone who sees you exactly as you are? Who gets the Peace Corps and the kissing under waterfalls?

Sharon: Yeah.

I remember my wife and I being somewhat puzzled by this back when we first saw the film in theaters, yet years later, I think I have a better understanding of what Carol is getting at.  Carol—and by extent the film itself—is calling into question the very concept of love and the borders and boundaries that we as a society place upon its many different forms.  If two individuals truly understand each other, enjoy each others’s company, and make each other happy, then that’s a loving relationship.  One can try to label what Sharon and Carol’s relationship would be (a homoromantic relationship between two heterosexual women?), but Carol is stating it ultimately doesn’t matter, nor does it matter if they understand what they exactly are.  What matters is finding someone that makes you feel whole again and brings the joyous fires of life back into your existence.  Someone that makes you feel and can share in your true happiness.  It’s an unorthodox, yet profound way of looking at a relationship, and I really appreciate the film for tackling it.  The conversation is proceeded by a beautiful scene where Carol sets off the building’s fire alarm, causing the sprinklers to turn on and everyone to leave except Sharon—who, instead, closes her eyes and lets the water rain down as Carol comes close and kisses her under their makeshift waterfall.

Carol and a now rejuvenated Sharon proceed to sneak their way out of the building and, in a spur-of-the-moment decision, opt to drive to New Orleans to have adventures.  Yet their timing couldn’t have been less thrilling (or so it would seem), as they immediately hit very heavy traffic on a bridge—the very same traffic that a taxi-riding Jeff and Pat are also stuck in as the latter chases after Linda to express his true feelings.  As fate continues to have it, Linda is also stuck in said traffic, and Pat decides to leave the taxi and start running to catch up to Linda—sprinting right past his mother who (bewildered by the surprise appearance of her son) gets out of the car along with Carol and start chasing after him.  Hilarity ensues when Pat finds a surprised Linda and starts giving the big damn apology speech trope, only to be surprised interrupted by his mom—causing everyone to start asking one another where they came from before Sharon humorously decides to introduce Carol, with Linda and Pat responding in a casual, friendly manner despite their bizarre situation.  The zany scene takes a complete turn in tone, however, when Jeff starts sprinting past the group.  All this time, Jeff has been contemplating within the taxi—somewhat glum over what he believes to have been his destiny; “You ever feel like you're waiting forever to figure out what your destiny is, and then when you do it's not really that exciting?”

Jeff sees a helicopter fly above the heavy traffic and a lightbulb seems to flick on in his head as he immediately starts sprinting in the chopper’s direction.  It's left ambiguous how certain Jeff is about what's at the end of the traffic (if he even truly has an idea as to what it is), yet his steadfast belief in a cosmic power compels him to keep sprinting until he reaches the cause of all the traffic: a massive car crash accident where one of the cars has fallen off the bridge into the water below.  Not hesitating for a second, Jeff plunges off the bridge into the water, quickly going under into the sinking car and coming up with two children.  Jeff goes down a second time to rescue their father, yet when the dad surfaces Jeff isn’t with him.  Pat less gracefully jumps into the water to save his brother.  After retrieving him and having a brief yet extreme moment of panic as Jeff's body lays unconscious, the Coast Guard (who just recently arrived) are able to perform successful CPR and revived Jeff.

The brothers are dropped off at a dock where Sharon is waiting to give them a big hug.  Reunited by the fateful event, the entire group go to celebrate Sharon's birthday at her home, with Pat and Linda seen trying to work out their issues in a positive manner.  Sometime later, paralleling one of the opening scenes, Jeff is seen alone again in the house watching the news.  The news covers Jeff’s rescue of the father and two girls, revealing the father’s name to be none other than Kevin.  Jeff smiles before silently getting up and grabbing the recently bought wood glue—finally finishing his job of fixing the shutters.  It's a true-blue happy ending, and a very satisfying, well written one at that.  Jeff Who Lives at Home is modest in scope, yet beautifully succeeds in its simplicity.  Even the film’s simple little ditty of a soundtrack works ideally in adding emotional impact to its small yet potent moments.  It’s a funny, charming, and incredibly sweet film, and shows that a film doesn’t have to aim big, to be big in heart.

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